Son of Fletch Read online

When Barbara’s face turned back toward them, toward the light, her cheeks glistened with tears.

  “How afraid they must have been,” she said.

  Juma said, “For hundreds of years.”

  “The terror,” Barbara said. “The utter despair.”

  Juma said, “The smell, the sweat, the shit of hundreds, maybe thousands of bodies. The crying that must have come from this cave, day and night, year after year.”

  The entrance to the cave was wide, but not so wide it could not be sealed by a few men with swords and guns, clubs and whips. The rear of the cave was total darkness. That damp, reeking, weeping darkness extending twelve miles underground, no way out from under the heaviness of the earth, however frantic, however intelligent, however energetic the effort, to light, to air, to food, back to their own realities, existences, their own loves, lives, expectations….

  There was only one way out of that cave: docile, enslaved.

  “Did your ancestors buy slaves, do you think?”

  “No,” Fletch answered.

  “I’m pretty sure not,” said Barbara. Juma ran his bare foot over the smoothness of the floor stone. “You see, that is how we must think of things.”

  “What do you mean?” Fletch asked.

  “I’m pretty sure my ancestors sold slaves. Do you see? Which is worse—to buy people or to sell them?”

  … So again Fletch stood with a woman who was deeply shocked, deeply saddened, her cheeks glistening with tears in less than perfect light; he, saddened before, saddened now, but now, half the world away, also enraged at the ignorance of the many, the purposeful ignorance of the few who manipulated such ignorance for their own power-mongering, greedy ends … enraged….

  To rousing cheers and chants of White rights! White rights! Wolfe finished his speech and, arms still folded high across his chest, stepped back.

  Kriegel stepped forward to speak.

  His voice was higher than Wolfe’s. “I hereby name this camp,” he shrieked, “Camp Orania!”

  The audience roared its approval.

  Fletch doubted many, if any, in the audience knew what Orania signified. In the wasteland of Karoo, South Africa, Orania is the name of the headquarters of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement.

  Without doubt, Kriegel meant it as a great compliment to the establishment of this camp in Alabama.

  “Hey.” Fletch nudged Carrie. Having her attention, he nodded his head, indicating Jack.

  Apparently leaving the camcorder on the tripod to run itself, Jack had gone forward to a sound console on a bench just in front of the porch of the log cabin. He had put on his earphones. He was fiddling with some dials.

  Fletch inserted his earplugs, concealing what he was doing no more than Carrie had. Then he put on his headphones. They were plugged into nothing. He tucked the wire into the collar of his shirt.

  Carrie did the same with her earphones.

  Fletch could hear nothing. Kriegel’s mouth was moving, head bobbing, his arms waving; from the audience arms shot up, mouths stretched as wide as those of chicks hoping for food: Fletch heard nothing.

  Carrie nudged Fletch and pointed.

  Three little girls, standing near the women, were vomiting.

  As Fletch watched, one of the women, apparently surprising herself, suddenly vomited.

  Two boy children among the men were on their knees vomiting.

  Several of the men in the crowd began to clutch their stomachs. They turned. They tried to run through and out of the crowd.

  They vomited.

  On the porch, the uniformed young man with the clipboard turned on his heel and entered the log cabin.

  Kriegel’s face turned ashen. His mouth was still moving but less like an orator and more like a fish.

  Wolfe raised one hand halfway toward his mouth and left it there. His eyes were staring downward in alarm. He stepped to the edge of the porch.

  He vomited off the porch a wide, forceful stream.

  The few men standing directly in front, somewhat below him, jumped back. Still they got splashed.

  Men in the audience fell onto their knees and were vomiting wide puddles.

  Others, standing over them, out of control, vomited on the heads, necks, backs of the kneeling men.

  Kriegel projected vomit straight into the microphone. He fell over sideways onto the porch like a board.

  Slowly, Carrie turned her face toward Fletch. Her eyes were wider than ever.

  She smiled.

  On his knees near them, Leary was vomiting such a steady stream he ran out of breath.

  Among the crowd of men, some were puking with hands braced on their knees, others kneeling puking, others rolling on the ground clutching their stomachs as they rolled puking. The few standing, watching all this in amazement, looked like upright steel beams unaffected in a forest of trees being thrashed, laid low by a hurricane.

  Apparently oblivious to all this, at the console, Jack threw a switch. Lights on the console’s panel went off.

  Jack took off his earphones.

  Pretending to rub each ear, he removed his earplugs.

  Seeing him do so, Carrie and Fletch removed their earphones and plugs as well.

  Carrie gripped Fletch’s arm.

  Her eyes were blazing.

  “What?” Fletch asked.

  She nodded toward the back of Kriegel’s mostly fallen audience.

  There, standing, staring at them, openmouthed was their friend, the sheriff, Joe Rogers.

  15

  “No, no, no,” Fletch insisted with as much conviction as he could. He and Carrie were skirting widely the ground on which the audience had stood, knelt, and puked, to get to the cabin’s porch where Jack was working with his electronic equipment.

  At first, Fletch had started directly across the field to speak to Sheriff Joe Rogers.

  Slipping on the wet ground, the sheriff had dodged behind the trailers into the woods.

  “I tell you, Carrie, the sheriff is here as a police spy, or something, taking down names, license plates. You know, doin’ police business. He must be.”

  “Why did he run from you?”

  “Because I was being stupid. He didn’t want me to blow his cover.”

  “Sure. I’ll believe that when catfish meow and climb trees.”

  “He’s here on duty.”

  “He’s in the wrong county for that, Mister Fletcher,” Carrie said through tight lips. “He’s in the wrong county, and he’s in the wrong state.”

  Jack said to them from the porch, “That Kriegel! He sure can raise a stink, can’t he?”

  “Somebody sure can.” Fletch and Carrie climbed the porch steps.

  “How did you do that?” Clearly Carrie was willing to think better of Jack. Somehow, through electronic legerdemain, he had made almost everybody in Camp Orania vomit.

  “Do what?” Jack was wrapping up his electrical wires, from microphone to speakers, console to microphone.

  “Make the audience so aptly responsive,” Fletch said.

  Jack grinned at Fletch. “I’ve learned a few things. How to Incapacitate People 101.”

  Fletch asked, “Not ‘to go with the flow’?”

  “Sure.” Jack laughed. “You didn’t see flow?”

  “There was plenty of flow,” Fletch agreed.

  It was almost fully dark.

  Fletch looked around the camp. The sheriff had been wearing boots, jeans, and a Western shirt.

  Some vehicles had left.

  Bare light bulbs shone in some of the converted carports. Few of the trailers had lights on in them.

  On the cabin’s porch, Fletch was satisfied they were out of earshot. The men in clusters around the front of the cabin were recovering from their illness, muttering to each other unhappily, even angrily.

  “Ever hear of a Joe Rogers?” Fletch asked Jack.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “You all mentioned him in the car. A friend of yours. A sheriff. Right?”

  “Right.”
/>   “I looked into him for you.”

  “Find out anything?”

  “He’s an Enforcer.”

  Hearing Jack, Carrie widened her eyes at Fletch.

  “An enforcer of what?” Fletch asked. “Who?”

  “Internal security,” Jack answered.

  Fletch asked, “What does that mean?”

  “Any of the members don’t do right, he takes care of them.”

  “Disciplines them?”

  “In a way,” Jack said. “This is a secret organization. Supposed to be. As you said, ‘Stupid people can’t keep secrets.’”

  “He kills them?” Fletch was aware his heart was beating faster than normal. “He shoots them? Are we talking about Joe Rogers?”

  “Yeah. Shoots them sometimes, I guess,” Jack answered. “Usually he garrotes them. With a wire. Leaves more of a message, you know what I mean?”

  “Oh, God,” Carrie said. “Francie!”

  “Encourages loyalty among the troops,” Jack said.

  Fletch turned. He put his hands on the porch rail to steady himself.

  Behind him, Carrie said, “Fletch …”

  The bonfire was being lit with flaming torches by the aproned cook and another man.

  The audience itself had broken up mostly into small groups of men who stood in the dark. Their camouflage shirts and pants, their boots, were well spotted with chili vomit.

  Their voices were sullen. Bottles were being passed around. Even through the ever-pervasive smell from the Porta Potties or from wherever, the strong smell of vomit, Fletch caught the occasional sweet whiff of marijuana in the breeze. From each group of quietly talking men, one or two looked out, around at all the other groups.

  Fletch guessed they were discussing their sudden, wicked illness. It had lasted well more than an hour.

  He also guessed, from the way they muttered, looked around suspiciously, they were also looking for someone to blame for their illness.

  If it were not the nature of these people to blame others for their ills, Fletch reasoned, they would not be here.

  Anyway, what alcohol and other substances they were ingesting now were going straight into empty stomachs, onto voided systems.

  One man, more than forty years old, ambled up to the edge of the porch from a nearby group. He stood on the ground, talking up to Fletch. “Did you eat that chili?” he demanded.

  “No,” Fletch said.

  “None of it?”

  “None of it.”

  “And you weren’t sick. I didn’t see you pukin’.”

  “Right. Eat I didn’t. Sick I wasn’t. Puke I didn’t.”

  The man turned to the group he had left. “See? He didn’t eat the chili. He didn’t puke.”

  An obscene muttering came from the group.

  The man rejoined the group. “No chili. No puke,” he explained.

  Fletch turned.

  Only Jack and Carrie were on the porch.

  Shoulders hunched, Carrie was leaning on the base of her spine, her hands on the porch rail.

  Jack was connecting the speaker wires to an audio disk player.

  “Now what?” Fletch asked him.

  “We’re going to have a dance,” Jack said. “You like to dance?”

  “Bugaloo.”

  “You can bugaloo?” Jack asked Carrie. “Will you save a waltz for me?”

  “Not tonight.” Carrie looked around at the glistening ground. “Don’t much care for your dance floor.”

  “Aw, shucks,” Jack said. “You’ve got to get down.”

  “Not on that mess. Fletch? Don’t you think we ought to get out of here, like right now?”

  “What’s true?” Fletch asked.

  Through the dark, Fletch heard a man from another group, one near the side of the cabin porch, say, “Who’s this Kriegel? Sounds like some kind of a foreigner to me.”

  “English,” a voice answered. “He’s from our English counterpart.”

  “German,” someone said. “Kriegel.”

  “South African,” said another.

  “Sounds like some kind of foreign faggot to me,” the first voice said.

  The groups of men were drifting toward the bonfire.

  Carrie said, “I really think it’s time to say good night, Fletch. I mean, get the E=MC2 out of here!”

  “Gee!” Fletch did not feel even slightly jolly. “Just when the dancin’ is about to begin?”

  “You’ll want to see this, I think, “Jack said. “The dance.”

  Recovered only somewhat, Leary was only a few meters away from Carrie.

  “I don’t need to,” Carrie said. “I really believe I don’t need to see the dance. I’ve seen enough.”

  “Give me a minute,” Fletch said. “You’ll stay here with Jack?”

  Carrie said, “You take the worst times to pee.”

  Jack inserted a disk in the player. He turned the volume up. “Loud enough?”

  “Can’t hear you,” Fletch said. “The music is too loud.”

  The music was martial.

  Immediately, like puppets on strings, a few men around the bonfire began lifting their knees to it, marching in place, waving their bottles. In the firelight immediately their faces seemed transported into some kind of a fantasy.

  FLETCH AMBLED INTO the woods behind the trailers.

  Once in the woods, he did not stop the sound of his own walking over dead leaves soon enough. He also did not hear over the sound of the loud, martial music.

  He heard the crack against his head just above his ear. He saw the flash of light.

  Knocked to the ground, he rolled over.

  Sheriff Joe Rogers stood over him with a wrist-thick tree branch.

  Staring down at Fletch on the ground, the sheriff said, “Shit! What are you lookin’ up at me for?”

  “You’re in the landscape.” Fletch put his hand over the lump developing over his ear. “The skyscape.”

  “You’re not supposed to be lookin’ at me!”

  “Can’t kill me while I’m lookin’ at you, is that it, Joe?”

  “Sure I can.” The sheriff swung his club at Fletch’s head.

  Fletch grabbed the club and pulled. The sheriff began falling toward him. Fletch put one foot up and caught the sheriff in the crotch.

  Then Fletch rolled out of the way of the falling sheriff.

  Fletch jumped up.

  For a moment, facedown, legs spread wide, the sheriff remained still on the ground.

  “Are you fixin’ to kill me, Joe?” Fletch kicked the sheriffs ass. “Are you fixin’ to kill Carrie, too?”

  Fletch kicked him again, harder. “Get up, you bastard. I want to see such a two-sided son of a bitch from the front!”

  For a heavy man, the sheriff got to his feet quickly and smoothly. He stood close to Fletch.

  “Son of a bitch,” Fletch said. “The Enforcer for the Tribal Nation.”

  The sheriff said, “Chief of Internal Affairs.”

  Fletch scoffed. “Sure! Big titles justify anything, right? Bunch of psychotic children!”

  “You could only be here for one reason, Fletcher. To destroy us. Somehow.”

  “You’re just doin’ your job, right, Sheriff?”

  “You’re damned right.”

  “Last night, you and your deputies supposedly were out in the rain looking for ‘Commandant’ Kriegel. You let him slip right through, didn’t you? What was all that garbage you gave me this morning? Carrie was carrying one dangerous hombre on the back of her truck. I thought you were being too damned agreeable. You were pretending to be a little drunk, right?”

  Eyes as wide and bright as a pickup’s headlights, the sheriff took a step toward Fletch. His fists looked as big as bowling balls.

  “I thought I knew you, Joe.”

  “You fixin’ to tell me how you mean to destroy us, Fletch? Will you tell me what the hell you’re doing here, or do I have to beat it out of you?”

  “You can try. You’ve already discove
red I’ve got a hard head.”

  “Talk, goddamn it, before I twist your fuckin’ head off!”

  The woods were flooded with the inane sound of martial music.

  “I brought Kriegel here.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “You lost sight of him on my farm, didn’t you?”

  “The hell you brought him here. You’re not one of us.”

  “How can you be sure, Joe?”

  “I’m damned sure. I know you, Fletch. I know all about you, Irwin Maurice Fletcher.”

  “I guess you do, at that.”

  “There’s only one reason you’re here. You mean to screw up our organization somehow. I’m in an important position here. I protect these people. And you’re lying. Only way to stop you from whatever you’re doin’ is to do you right here and now.”

  “And that way no one back home will ever know what a murderin’, two-sided son of a bitch you are. That right, Joe?”

  The sheriff smiled. “That’s right, too.”

  Fletch said, “Don’t smile when you say that.”

  Taking a sudden step forward, the sheriff began to wrap his forearms around Fletch’s head. He tried to grab his chin, force him to the ground, possibly break his neck.

  Fletch spun faster than the sheriff expected. As he spun, he raised the side of his right hand fast and hard into the base of the sheriffs nose.

  Fletch thought he was free of the sheriffs reach.

  Until he felt something the size of a bowling ball slam against his head.

  Fletch tripped over his own legs.

  Lying on the ground, he saw right in front of him the club the sheriff had used on him.

  He grabbed it.

  Kneeling, he saw the sheriff lunging at him.

  Using both hands, Fletch plunged the sharp end of the tree branch into the base of the sheriff’s stomach.

  As the sheriff fell, Fletch jumped up.

  Fletch clubbed the sheriff on the back of his head.

  On the ground, the sheriff did not move.